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With the announcement by Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services, that Trustmark Life Insurance Company’s recent increases in premiums for their health insurance were “excessive” comes the certain result: A few may be helped, but many will be harmed. She declared, “It’s time for Trustmark to immediately rescind these rate [increases], issue refunds to consumers or publicly explain their refusal to do so.” Under ObamaCare’s usurpations of prior state law, any premium increases of more than 10 percent are to be reviewed and if determined to be unreasonable, made subject to public exposure and pressure to abide by the agency’s dictates as to what is reasonable. A spokeswoman for Trustmark, Cindy Gallaher, responded to Sebelius: “We respectfully disagree with the assumptions and conclusions drawn today by the Department of Health and Human Services. Our premiums are driven by the rising cost and increased utilization of medical services.”

Over half of U.S. immigration officials believe the White House focuses more heavily on promoting immigration than improving national security, according to a 2011 survey directed by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The DHS Inspector General (IG) audit, which was administered between January and May 2011, submitted an online survey to a random selection of Immigration Services Officers (ISOs) in all 26 U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) districts across the United States. According to the IG, the questions examined the agency’s "FY 2011 performance measures, pressure to adjudicate cases, and overall impressions about the USCIS mission." In 2010, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) wrote a letter to the Inspector General (Todd Zinser), the USCIS Director (Alejandro Mayorkas), and the Secretary of Homeland Security (Janet Napolitano) expressing several concerns he had about the immigration benefit adjudication system. In requesting the report, Grassley asked the DHS to evaluate the following matters:

Despite his advanced age, it appears Warren Buffett has never heard the admonition, “Practice what you preach.” And it seems that some of his apologists haven’t, either. As you may know, Buffett has long been urging the government to seize more money from the rich, with the rationale that they have an obligation to pay more. In response, many traditionalists have told him to put up or shut up: If he truly believes in what he says, there’s nothing stopping him from writing a check to Big Brother as large as his socialism-espousing mouth. And now Buffett has a response:

The 10th anniversary of the opening of the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility was Wednesday. On January 11, 2002, the first 20 prisoners arrived at the U.S. naval base in Cuba, being ordered detained as suspected “enemy combatants” in the global War on Terror which was initiated by the Congress and the President (without, it must be remembered, a declaration of war as mandated by the Constitution) in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit on Tuesday unanimously upheld a lower court ruling enjoining the enforcement of an amendment to the Oklahoma state constitution that barred state courts from taking Sharia law into consideration when deciding cases. Although the measure received overwhelming support from the citizens of the Sooner State, it was immediately challenged in court by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

The exit polls following the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary showed something remarkable that somehow missed the evening news: Paul consistently won the votes of the young, the disaffected, the independent, as well as discouraged Democrats. CNN’s exit polls in New Hampshire showed Paul winning almost half the voters aged 18-29 (compared to Romney’s 26 percent), and splitting the vote with Romney in the 30-to-39 age bracket. Paul also won 35 percent of unmarried voters, 40 percent of those who had never voted in a primary before, one-third of the independent vote, and nearly half of those with no religious affiliation. He also took a third of those who characterized themselves as “somewhat liberal” in their outlook.

Will a northern plains state axe the property tax? This June, residents of North Dakota will vote on a primary ballot measure which, if approved by voters, would eliminate local property taxes, retroactive as of January 1, 2012. There could be no better place than the Flickertail State — which has the lowest unemployment rate in the country and a thriving energy-based economy — to attempt this unprecedented experiment in government by the people.

While diverging from Ron Paul on a number of political issues, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) says he is not ready to see the liberty-minded Texas Congressman withdraw from the GOP presidential race. "I really don’t want Ron Paul to drop out until whoever our front-runner is is collecting some of the ideas that he’s talking about," DeMint said when the Daily Caller asked him whether it was time for other GOP contenders to relinquish their campaigns and support former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, who took first place in both the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary.

As Minnesota voters gear up to vote on a state constitutional amendment defining marriage as only between a man and a woman, the Catholic Church’s archbishop for Minneapolis and St. Paul has ordered priests in his diocese to show their support for the amendment effort — and the church’s stand on the institution of marriage, which they promised to defend when they were ordained — or remain silent. According to the Progressive Catholic Voice, a blog that supports same-sex marriage, the letter from Archbishop John Niensedt was addressed to the priests and deacons of the archdiocese and was originally published in the Archdiocesan Updates newsletter. In the epistle to his fellow priests, Niensedt, who has been a vocal supporter of the marriage amendment, wrote, “I do not believe it is an exaggeration to say that in this movement to protect and defend the definition of marriage as a union between one man and one woman we are faced with one of the greatest challenges of our times.” He warned that the goal of those who oppose passage of the marriage amendment “is not just to secure certain benefits for a particular minority, but, I believe, to eliminate the need for marriage altogether.”

In what some legal analysts consider the most significant decision covering religious freedom in the last 20 years, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled January 11 that a religious organization has the right to fire an employee under the 1964 Civil Rights Act’s “ministerial exception” clause.